wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Families paper still not finished

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Note #8129 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Families paper still not finished
04087
February 18, 2004

Families paper still not finished

Going is  'excruciatingly difficult' for collaborating groups

by Bill Lancaster

LOUISVILLE - The theological section of a controversial paper on the changing
nature of families was to be presented to a committee of the General Assembly
Council (GAC) last week, but it wasn't quite ready.

The GAC's Congregational Ministries Division Committee (CMDC) now expects to
formally receive the document when it meets again in June - although its
members are likely to see it before then.

The Advisory committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) still plans to
finalize the entire report by Feb. 27, the deadline for presentation to this
year's General Assembly in Richmond, VA.

The paper was sent back to ACSWP by last year's Assembly, which instructed
the committee to consult with the Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of
Theology and Worship/Spiritual Formation (TAW) in re-writing what was then
titled "Living Faithfully With Families in Transition."

The Rev. Joseph Small, associate director for TAW, told the CMDC last week
that 18 drafts of the theological portion have been produced, but none has
brought full agreement between TAW and ACSWP.

"We are working on a theological section that is responsible, Biblically and
confessionally, but also lifts up the kinds of concerns held by the ACSWP,"
he said. "This is excruciatingly difficult."

John Bolt, a GAC member from Charleston, WV, asked how much freedom ASCWP
would have to edit the theological section. Small replied, "We are in a
process to produce a document that is fully acceptable to both of us. It
would be unseemly to do otherwise."

The title of the paper has been changed to "Transforming Families." It is
intended to convey two meanings - that the church is transforming families
and that families are transforming society.

ACSWP was scheduled to take up the current draft of the families paper in a
conference call on Feb. 18.

Critics of the original 43-page report claimed its authors had refused to
make moral distinctions and placed families headed by same-sex couples on the
same moral plane with those headed by married heterosexual couples, in
violation of scripture and Christian morality. They prepared a one-page
substitute that defined marriage, as PC(USA) doctrine does, as a union of
"one man and one woman." Neither version passed muster at last year's
Assembly.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA's) stated clerk, has put the
families paper on his "Top 10" list of issues coming before this year's 216th
Assembly in Richmond, VA, which will begin on June 26.

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