wfn.org | More Light churches receive Witherspoon Society award

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30-June-1996 
 
GA96020 
 
    More Light churches receive Witherspoon Society award 
 
ALBUQUERQUE--The 73 Presbyterian congregations that have declared 
themselves "More Light" (willing to ordain gay and lesbian members to 
church office) were given the Witherspoon Society's Congregation Award at 
the society's annual luncheon here June 30. 
 
    About 75 members and pastors of More Light churches came forward to 
receive the award.  The Rev. Byron Shafer presented the award on behalf of 
the society to Virginia West Davidson, a member of Downtown United 
Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y.  "The More Light churches are 
demonstrating the advent of a new heaven and a new earth -- one of full 
inclusion and participation for all Presbyterians," Shafer said. 
 
    Davidson said "the heart of the [More Light] movement is hospitality -- 
loving each other as we love ourselves."  She said that "as love grows, 
mistrust and fear melt away." 
 
    The society gave its Andrew Murray Award to the Rev. Bruce Rolstad, a 
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) minster from nearby Santa Fe.  For 
more than 33 years, Rolstad has been active in economic and social 
community development, rural health and housing development and various 
social welfare ministries. 
 
    He thanked the Presbyterian Church for its support through the 
Presbyterian Hunger Program, Native American education grants and the 
Self-Development of People program.  He also thanked First Presbyterian 
Church of Santa Fe and its former pastor, executive director the Rev. James 
D. Brown, for its support.  "And I am a dues-paying member of the 
Witherspoon Society," Rolstad told the crowd of several hundred, "which is 
the next best thing to being Presbyterian." 
 
    Keynote speaker the Rev. Jack Stotts, soon to retire president of 
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, said the real issues of the 
current debate over ordination of gay and lesbian persons are the church's 
theology of order and its theology of human sexuality. 
 
    "It is a theological issue to discover how God is ordering the world 
toward the fulfillment of God's purpose," Stotts said.  "And Christian 
discipleship then becomes ordering what we have been given in light of 
God's ordering of creation."  Stotts said that order is "a community of 
inclusive friendship." 
 
    Human sexuality is part of that ordering process.  "The issue is not 
ordination," he insisted.  "The issue is how we order our lives as human 
sexual selves."  Stotts said the Presbyterian Church has "not yet done 
sufficient theological homework" to produce an adequate theology of human 
sexuality. 
 
    He said that theological work needs to be done in congregations and 
presbyteries -- "in contexts where people know each other as friends, 
because ordination cannot be done by strangers." 
 
    Friends, Stotts said, "are nurturers, not adversaries.  Friends treat 
each other decently." 
 
    But now and then, he continued, "theological vigilantes arrive -- 
crusaders for their own absolute truth."  Citing "The Presbyterian Layman" 
as an example, Stotts said, "These vigilantes seem to have forgotten that 
Christians are friends.  They loot the time and attention of church 
leaders, with the result that they scandalize the gospel of Jesus Christ." 
 
    Stotts said he had just one question for "The Presbyterian Layman" -- 
the same question asked of Sen. McCarthy during the witchhunts of the 1950s 
-- "Have you no decency?" 
 
    Decency and order -- hallmarks of Presbyterianism -- "offer hope for 
the future," Stotts said.  "Hope," he concluded, "is a stern taskmaster 
because it requires us to stay together as friends even when we are most 
tempted to separate." 
 
 
Jerry Van Marter 

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