wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Family report returned for further study

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Note #7802 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Family report returned for further study
GA03113

Family report returned for further study

Assembly wants ACSWP, Theology and Worship to rethink family policies

by Evan Silverstein

DENVER, May 30 - A controversial policy paper on the changing nature of
American families - and an alternate draft proposed by members of the General
Assembly Committee on National Issues - are both being returned to the group
that produced the original, "Living Faithfully with Families in Transition."

Commissioners to the 215th Assembly voted Friday to return the original
47-page report and the two-page substitute proposed during committee debate,
to the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). 

The advisory group, which develops social policies for GA consideration, is
to work in consultation with the PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship to
"strengthen" the denomination's report on families and report back to next
year's General Assembly in Richmond, VA. 

The brief substitute statement, proposed by a handful of National Issues
Committee members working with the leader of a conservative Presbyterian
think tank, had won the support of the committee, but the full Assembly voted
279-232 to order further study of both documents and the issues that gave
rise to them.

During a substantial and fairly contentious debate, a number of amendments
and a motion to reconsider the Assembly's action failed.
The cost of returning the papers for further study, according to the Rev.
Keith Paige, moderator of the National Issues Committee, will be $12,500 this
year and $29,370 in 2004.

The Assembly action closed a debate that got under way when the
national-issues committee began its deliberations on Monday. A number of
amended versions of the ACSWP document were voted down; motions to flatly
reject it were defeated; and, ironically, motions to return it to ACSWP for
further study or to send it to Theology and Worship officials also were
defeated.

The substitute paper was introduced by the Rev. Marjorie Working, a committee
member who serves as associate pastor of El Montecito Presbyterian Church, of
Santa Barbara, CA.

The substitute report was written in part a few weeks before the Assembly,
according to Working, and on "Monday morning (of the Assembly), we kind of
agreed on what we would put" in it.
 
She said the idea for the substitute report emerged through a process of
"email networking" that identified significant opposition to the ACSWP
report.

Working said she and other contributors to the alternate paper believed the
sociology and theology of the ACSWP version was flawed and undependable, and
in working on their rewrite were "determined to take the best ideas of that
lengthy report and condense them into a two-page report that affirmed our
Biblical standards, our Book of Confessions. That's what we tried to do."

The Rev. Eric Mount, a National Issues Committee member from Transylvania
Presbytery, who favored ACSWP's version, was one of 16 commissioners who
signed a minority report that would have proposed resurrecting the original.

"I believe, at the end of the day, next year at the General Assembly, there
will be something better coming out of this than would have come out of it
had we adopted either of the reports," Mount said.

Working responded: "That's my hope, that's my hope. Although I would have
preferred the majority report (in support of the two-page version)."
Critics of "Living Faithfully with Families in Transition" contended during
open committee hearings that it diminishes the importance of traditional
two-parent families and elevates non-traditional families, including those
involving unmarried and same-sex relationships, to moral equivalence, in
violation of scripture and of Christian morality.

The briefer substitute defines marriage much more narrowly than the ACSWP's
policy statement, specifying that marriage is a "civil contract between a
woman and a man," and that, "for Christians, marriage is a covenant through
which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their
lives of discipleship."
The longer paper documents the changing structure of family life in the
United States - which now includes, for example, single-parent households,
families in which children are raised by grandparents or other non-parent
relatives, and domestic partnerships other than marriage. It discusses how
families of a wide diversity of forms can raise children faithfully and
responsibly.

The ACSWP report, compiled in response to directives from General Assemblies
in 1997 and 1998, asks the church to commit itself to being an inclusive and
caring community of faith in which many forms of family are valued, including
"families with members of homosexual orientation." 
"I think the point was to describe all the various family forms that we
have," said Mount, "and then to say, 'What makes one of these good or bad is
the quality of the love, of the care and the mutuality and the nurturing and
so on that occurs there.'" 

Those who joined Working in claiming authorship of the briefer paper were
Alan Wisdom, director of Presbyterian Action (previously named the Institute
on Religion and Democracy), a conservative think tank in Washington, DC;
Elder Janet Nickels, of Shenandoah Presbytery; Elder Mary Alice Pugh, of the
Presbytery of Tropical Florida; Elder Barbara Harris, of the Presbytery of
Sheppards and Lapsley; Elder Richard Walker, of the Presbytery of San Diego;
and the Rev. Lynell Caudillo, of the Presbytery of Seattle.
 
In other actions on matters arising from the National Issues Committee, the
Assembly:

* Rejected, with comment, a resolution expressing concern to the Chevrolet
division of the General Motors Corporation for a marketing strategy that
seeks to exploit religion for economic gain. The comment appended by the
commissioners notes that the Chevrolet Division of GM has discontinued its
marketing relationship with the "Come Together and Worship" tour.

*Approved, with comment, an ACSWP recommendation that the 215th Assembly
commend to individuals, congregations and presbyteries for study and advocacy
"When Hate Comes To Town: A Handbook of Effective Community Responses." The
publication explores the meaning of hate crimes, with a particular attention
to racism and white supremacy, anti-Semitism, homophobia and violence against
women. It also urges the General Assembly Council through its ministry
divisions and program areas to continue working on these issues and to
promote the document for church-wide study and use. The comment changes the
title of the publication, which had been "When Hate Groups Come to Town."

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