Presbyterian News Service
06285 May 23, 2006
General Assembly backgrounder: ordination standards
Debate on G-6.0106b complicated by Theological Task Force report
by Jerry L. VanMarter
LOUISVILLE - Including overtures and concurrences, 22 of the 173 presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have petitioned the 217th General Assembly to send a proposed amendment to the presbyteries for ratification to delete G-6.0106b from the denomination's Book of Order.
That provision of the church's constitution requires of church officers either "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."
The ban on the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians dates back even further, to 1978, when the General Assembly adopted a "definitive guidance" that "self-affirming, practicing homosexuals" are not eligible for ordination.
When the 1996 General Assembly proposed the inclusion of G-6.0106b in the church's Constitution, 57 percent of the presbyteries voted to ratify it. Two subsequent attempts to remove it - in 1998 and 2002 - failed by votes of 67 percent and 73 percent, respectively.
Proponents of the ban point to its increasingly wide margins of defeat as evidence that the PC(USA) is decisively opposed to its removal from The Book of Order. Opponents of the ban counter that the "popular vote" was much narrower and that the issue is one of justice and equality for all Presbyterians.
The issue may be moot this year. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church before taking up the G-6.0106b proposals.
The TTF is proposing that no changes be made to the constitutional standards for ordination or the authoritative interpretations that buttress them, while giving ordaining bodies ¾ congregations in the case of elders and deacons and presbyteries in the case of ministers - some leeway in applying the standards to particular candidates for ordination, thereby creating the possibility that some bodies could ordain non-celibate gays and lesbians.
If the TTF recommendations are approved, the Assembly would be hard-pressed to take any further action on G-6.0106b.
Two presbyteries - Upper Ohio Valley and Central Washington - are calling for a moratorium on G-6.0106b-related action for eight years and 12 years, respectively.
The overtures related to G-6.0106b will be handled by Assembly Committee 4 - Church Orders.