wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Family paper inches toward completion

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Note #8136 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04097
February 20, 2004

Family paper inches toward completion

Writing group has some last-minute theological fine-tuning to do

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - A controversial policy paper on the changing American family
this week came a step closer to being finalized, but still isn't quite ready
for submission to this summer's General Assembly.

With the clock ticking toward a Feb. 27 deadline, the committee charged with
writing the "Transforming Families" paper for the Presbyterian Church (USA)
approved a "rationale" for the proposed policy paper during a conference call
on Feb. 18.

However, the theological portion of the draft document and the section
listing its recommendations were referred to an editing team for further
revision.

Still, the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) is confident
that the report will be finished on time for submission to this summer's
Assembly in Richmond, VA.

"I appreciate the paper," said the Rev. B Gordon Edwards of Stillwater, OK, a
member of ACSWP. "I thought it read much better, and runs very smoothly."

Another conference call has been scheduled for Feb. 25. Members expect to
approve the latest changes then.

Wednesday's conference call was an extension of an ACSWP meeting last month
when committee members gathered at the Presbyterian Center to wrestle with
nuances of the paper's language and ordered more revisions to the theological
section.

This week the committee members focused on developing a transition section
between the theological context and the concluding recommendations. The
discussion centered on a collection of "affirmations and recommendations"
introduced during the January meeting by a committee subgroup with the
assistance of Alan Wisdom.

Wisdom, a member of the panel that responded to a request from last year's
Assembly that the theological section of the draft be strengthened, also
helped write a paper put forward as an alternative to ACSWP's original.

Wisdom is a representative of Presbyterians in Faith and Action, a "think
tank" and advocacy group that is part of the Institute on Religion and
Democracy, an organization headquartered in Washington, DC, that describes
itself as "an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their
churches' social witness in accordance with Biblical and historic Christian
teachings."

ACSWP members last month called for the inclusion of several theological
themes in the "Theological Context" section. These included a focus on
Reformed views of the Sovereignty of God, a greater emphasis on sin and
idolatry, Baptism, Christian vocation and families, and justice and social
transformation.

"We want to be faithful to those themes ... on which the committee had
general consensus," said the ACSWP chair, the Rev. Nile Harper, a retired
minister from Ann Arbor, MI.

During the conference call, a writing team was appointed to review a number
of comments submitted by ACSWP members and to examine the affirmations
developed at the January meeting.

"The writing team was charged to consider the affirmations as a possible
envisioning transitional bridge to connect the theological context section of
the paper with the concluding policy recommendations," said the Rev. Peter A.
Sulyok, ACSWP's coordinator, who was appointed to work with the writing team.

"The committee felt they had enough material that they should refer it to an
editing committee to examine all of these good comments and incorporate them
into an even better paper," Sulyok said.

Joining Sulyok on the writing team will be Wisdom, the Rev. Charles Wiley of
the denomination's Office of Theology and Worship, and the paper's editor,
the Rev. Eric Mount, professor emeritus of religion at Presbyterian-related
Centre College in Danville, KY.

The report already has been revised 18 times.

ACSWP, which develops social policies for GA consideration, had urged the
church in its original 43-page report to commit to being an inclusive
community that values many forms of family. Critics said that paper elevated
non-traditional families, including those involving unmarried partners and
same-sex couples, to moral equivalence with traditional,
two-heterosexual-parent families, in violation of scripture and Christian
morality.

ACSWP's vice chair, the Rev. Sue Dickson of El Paso, TX, said she believes
the retooled paper faithfully expresses not only "our Reformed theology, but
also the reality of contemporary family life," and is confident that it "can
muster broad support throughout the church."

ACSWP member Ronald Stone objected to the inclusion of a stand-alone
theological section, saying that it should be incorporated as part of the
paper's rationale.

"The theological context, which is basically an interpretation of some
Biblical verses and concessions and some theological affirmations, would
belong in the rationale along with the study of the cultural context and the
socioeconomic context," said Stone, a retired professor at Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary and an elder at East Liberty Presbyterian Church in
Pittsburgh. "I think that's the way we tend to do theology when addressing
social and cultural issues."

Harper, the ACSWP chair, said combining the sections could make the report "a
document that won't pass in General Assembly."

"People are expecting what comes this time will have a much more substantial
theological foundation, and that it will have a preeminent position," he
said. "I think that's just a simple reading of reality."

The rationale was approved without the theological piece.

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