wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Families paper makes GA deadline

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Note #8144 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04108
February 26, 2004

Families paper makes GA deadline

ACSWP approves new theological section and recommendations

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - With hours to spare, a controversial paper on changing families
was finished Wednesday, on time for submission to this summer's General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Facing a Feb. 27 deadline, the committee writing the "Transforming Families"
paper for the denomination approved the document's highly debated, and
often-revised theological section during a conference call on Feb. 25.

The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) also approved changes
to the paper's recommendations section, completing the revisions. The
document will be submitted to the Assembly, which will begin on June 26 in
Richmond, VA.

"The long, slow process of crafting a policy statement on families now moves
to the General Assembly," the Rev. Peter Sulyok, the ACSWP coordinator, said
after the committee met by telephone. "Today's vote demonstrated the ACSWP's
ability to grapple with complex issues involving justice concerns and model
for the church new ways of listening and dealing with potentially divisive
issues."

The meeting was a continuation of a Feb. 18 conference call in which the
committee members wrestled with nuances of language and ordered more
revisions to the theological section and the report's recommendations.

Committee members had referred the theology section and recommendations to a
writing team to develop a transitional section between the two. The revisions
centered on a collection of "affirmations and recommendations" introduced by
a committee task group in January.

Alan Wisdom, a representative of Presbyterians in Faith and Action, a "think
tank" and advocacy group that is part of the Institute on Religion and
Democracy in Washington, DC, was a principal author of the affirmations and
recommendations section.

ACSWP members made minor changes to the new transitional section before
approving it along with the theological section and the recommendations.
Portions of the paper were revised 19 times, mostly the theological section.

The paper sparked controversy at last year's Assembly when critics claimed it
was flawed theologically 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.

Sulyok said he believes the retooled paper will have broad support at the
Assembly and in the PC(USA).

He said the finished document is "broad enough to include all the families in
the church, and wide enough to create the space for the church to reach out,
both within its own walls and beyond its walls into society, to seek
opportunities for ministries with families."

The 209th Assembly in 1997 asked ACSWP to conduct "an examination of changing
families and social structures that support families," focusing especially on
their impact on children, "to strengthen the church's ministry to
contemporary families."

"I think this is a significant moment for all of us," said the ACSWP chair,
the Rev. Nile Harper, a retired minister from Ann Arbor, MI. "We are some six
and a half years into the thoughtful and prayerful and serious consideration
and work on this document. So many people have contributed to this over a
period of more than six years that we lift them all up with our sense of
thanksgiving and gratitude."

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