wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Covenant Network not ready to 'call the question'

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Note #7732 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Covenant Network not ready to 'call the question'
GA03042

Covenant Network not ready to 'call the question'

by Bill Lancaster

DENVER, May 26 - Rev. Joanna Adams, vice moderator of the Covenant Network of
Presbyterians and co-pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, said
during the Covenant Network's annual General Assembly luncheon that the
organization remains committed to the removal from the Book of Order of
G-6.0106b, the provision that says officers of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
must be faithful in marriage between a man and a woman or chaste in
singleness.

	However, Adams added, "We do not want to call the question until we
have the votes to win. We do not want another negative vote. We do not want
to send out another message that we are still locked into the flawed policy
of exclusion."

	For the year ahead, she said, the Network will work "to create a
climate in which constitutional change can occur." She said the group has
hired a staff person to reach out to presbyteries that have voted against
removal.

"None of us can say to another part of the Body of Christ, 'I have no need of
you,'" she said.

Referring to her unwillingness to support Overture 03-07, from the Presbytery
of Des Moines, Adams said she has been called a "towel thrower" by the
Presbyterian Layman, a conservative independent publication, as in "throwing
in the towel." The overture would delete G-6.0106a from the church
constitution.

 "John Buchanan (co-pastor of Fourth Presbyterian in Chicago, a former
Assembly moderator) told me I had been known as a flame thrower, but never a
towel thrower," Adams said, adding, "We want to change the constitution, but
we want a comprehensive strategy." 

She said the Network will focus on "the great middle" of the PC(USA). 

"No one is going to rest until there is not a single person who is
categorically excluded," she said.

Rev. Tim Hart Anderson, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, of
Minneapolis, the featured speaker of the luncheon, traced the development of
his thinking on the question of whether gays and lesbians should be granted
full participation in the life of the church, including service as ministers
of Word and Sacrament.

He said he was very discouraged after the 1996 Assembly in Albuquerque, when
G-6.0106b was approved. But then he took a trip to Cuba, where the church
existed under very difficult circumstances but did not give in to despair.
Anderson said he saw a sign in a church in Cuba that read in Spanish, "There
will be better times, but this is our time." This time, he said, is the time
of the Covenant Network. 

Anderson recalled a hymn lyric that says "there is a wideness in God's mercy
that is wider than the sea." He said that God is calling gay and lesbian
people to serve as pastors, and the church must get out of the way of the
Holy Spirit.

 "I'm very competitive and I don't like to lose," Anderson said, "but it's
probably good for us to be on the losing side for a while, and experience
being a minority."

Anderson said the Rev. Janie Spahr, one of the most prominent advocates of
gay and lesbian rights in the PC(USA), once told him, "Welcome to the margin"
- then added, "It's not actually the margin, it's the horizon."

"Friends, there will be better times, but this is our time," he concluded.
"Thanks be to God."

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