wfn.org | College Women's Group Will Survive Despite Denunciations

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19-January-1999 
99025 
 
    Controversial College Women's Group 
    Will Survive Despite Denunciations 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The beleaguered National Network of Presbyterian College 
Women (NNPCW) will be commended to the General Assembly for continued 
funding despite withering criticism from its denominational foes - 
including a charge by Rev. Parker Williamson, the editor of "The 
Presbyterian Layman," that "the last vestige of Marxism ... will be found 
clinging to the skirts of this Network." 
 
    Conservative critics, focusing on the network's primary resource, a 
1993 packet of issues papers called "Young Women Speak," have charged that 
the NNPCW's publications and activities fall outside the biblical and 
constitutional boundaries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). 
 
    In testimony before a seven-member Task Force to Review the NNPCW, 
leaders and members of the network said it merely provides  a "safe place" 
for young women to explore issues of faith. 
 
    Although it concluded that "some (network) materials violated policies 
of the PC(USA), were inconsistent with our confessions and were lacking in 
biblical and theological foundation," the task force voted to recommend 
that the NNPCW be affirmed and that its current leadership be commended. It 
also recommended that funds be provided to employ a permanent full-time 
staff person for the network. (Since its founding in 1992, the NNPCW has 
been staffed primarily by interns.) 
 
    The task force also will recommend that the network's mission and 
values statements be rewritten to ensure that they "are faithful" to 
denominational standards,and that an editorial board be appointed to help 
the network develop new "discussion resources" to replace "Young Women 
Speak," which has been out of print for several months. It said this board 
should include a Reformed theologian, a Biblical scholar and a specialist 
in curriculum development. 
 
    "We affirm the importance of the NNPCW," the group said in its report. 
"The network ... has provided a powerful witness for the church." 
 
    The task force also criticized the National Ministries Division for 
providing inadequate supervision of the NNPCW. "While we affirm the 
importance of empowering college women to develop and to lead the work of 
NNPCW," it said, "the lack of consistent staffing failed to provide 
sufficient oversight to this ministry. 
 
    "That, in turn, led to situations where materials were produced without 
proper editing or review, philosophical decisions about ministry were made 
that were not fully developed, and students were given responsibilities for 
which they were not prepared or qualified." 
 
    Criticism of the network spilled onto the floor of the General Assembly 
last June in Charlotte, N.C., where commissioners responded by voting to 
withdraw the denomination's sponsorship and funding. After an 11th-hour 
demonstration by network supporters and an appeal from Rev. James Mead, the 
vice-moderator, the Assembly reversed itself, approving funding for one 
year and creating the task force to evaluate "the resources, publications 
and programs of the NNPCW . . . to ensure that [they] are consistent with 
the Scripture and the Constitution of the PC(USA)." 
 
    The task force heard testimony from more than two dozen witnesses and a 
dozen groups - including the three groups most critical of the NNPCW (The 
Presbyterian Coalition, Voices of Orthodox Women and  "The Presbyterian 
Layman") - on Jan. 11, and formulated its recommendations to the 1999 
General Assembly the next day. 
 
    Terry Schlossberg, the executive director of Presbyterians Pro-Life, 
appeared on behalf of Voices of Orthodox Women. She argued that "the NNPCW 
does not further the witness and mission of our Church." Hammering away at 
"Young Women Speak" - which was written by members of NNPCW and edited by 
an intern - she criticized its approaches to sexuality, theology and 
evangelism. 
 
    "There is an absence of Scriptural and confessional teaching on sexual 
relationships or on marriage in the NNPCW material, and all forms of sexual 
expression outside marriage are affirmed," Schlossberg charged. 
Furthermore, she said, the document's sections on Feminist/Womanist 
Theologies and Inclusive Language "differ dramatically from those expressed 
in the Scripture and the historic confessions of the church." 
 
    Gusti Newquist, NNPCW's current intern, who joined the network while a 
student at Marshall University in West Virginia, defended "Young Women 
Speak" as a resource that was developed to address a desperate need. "There 
is no other resource like this," she told the task force. "These women, not 
professional theologians, said, `We need this,' and went out and created 
it." 
 
    Although he questioned parts of it, Mead, a task force member, 
commented that "much of `Young Women Speak' is first-rate." 
 
    In a presentation illustrated by 28 slides, Williamson excoriated a 
half-dozen feminist theologians - most of whom took part in the infamous 
1993 Re-Imagining Conference -- whose works were recommended in "Young 
Women Speak." He said the network's recommendation of the work of Phyllis 
Trible, a professor of sacred literature at Union Theological Seminary in 
New York, "pours in a measure of Marxism." 
 
    The slide he showed to support the Marxism charge offered a single 
quote from Trible's book, "God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality": "A Marxist 
view of Jesus gives the Gospels afresh both to Christians and to atheists, 
and so provides each group with new insights of itself and the other." 
 
    Williamson also charged that the network's now-defunct Web site was "an 
Internet gateway to hard-core homosexual pornography." The site was shut 
down last July, about the time Williamson published the pornography charges 
on a Web site maintained by "The Presbyterian Layman." 
 
    The task force said in its report, "We are confident that links to 
pornography were unknown, unintended and unwanted by NNPCW leaders." 
 
    Emily Meyer of Seattle, Wash., a member of the NNPCW Coordinating 
Council (CoCo), who was responsible for maintaining the Web site when 
Williamson made his charges, said she was never aware of any links to 
pornography. 
 
    The task force also pleaded for "a new comprehensive church-wide 
strategy for campus ministry, of which NNPCW will be a part." 
 
    "NNPCW is a bandage on a gaping wound where the Presbyterian Church has 
abandoned college students," said Rev. Jeff Bridgeman, a General Assembly 
Council and task force member from Solvang, Calif.  "Any bandage feels 
good, but NNPCW can't ... cover the whole wound." 
 
    Rebecca Barnes, a student at the College of Wooster in Ohio and a 
co-moderator of CoCo, told the task force that the NNPCW offers college 
women an opportunity to "connect faith and issues."  Barnes, an elder at 
Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Ky., said her involvement 
in the network has made her "proud to be a Christian." 
 
    "NNPCW is about . . . giving women a voice," she said. 
 
    Task force member Miriam Pride, the president of Blackburn College in 
Carlinville, Ill., concluded: "We have heard, on both sides of the 
argument, strong statements about the role of young women in our church, 
and the need for support of young women. "We all agree that college women's 
ministry is a powerful resource to our church - although we also disagree 
about how to do it."  

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