wfn.org | Committee acts to ensure availability of sexuality curriculum during

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Note #6005 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

revision
27-June-2000
GA00058

	Committee acts to ensure availability of sexuality curriculum during
revision

	by Sue Boardman

LONG BEACH, June 26 -- After considerable debate, the Committee on Christian
Education and Publishing at the 212th General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) voted to divide Overture 00-70 and deal separately with
recommendations concerning the curriculum materials  "God's Gift of
Sexuality."

	Recommendation number one, approved 41-15, allows the Curriculum Publishing
Program Area (CPPA) to reprint the materials, as revised in 1998, until a
revision mandated by the 210th General Assembly can be completed. According
to Faye Burdick, senior editor for curriculum, supplies on hand may be
adequate to meet the congregational demand for the next two years,
eliminating a need for reprinting the materials. But, she said, the
curriculum has become popular with other denominations, secular social
agencies and public libraries, a fact that could greatly impact supplies.

	The second recommendation was amended to instruct CPPA to send an
"interpretive insert sheet" on the companion curriculum piece, "Sexual
Abstinence and the Abundant Life," with each order of "God's Gift of
Sexuality" materials. The insert sheet is intended to include an attached
order card. Commissioners favoring the amended action believe it will serve
to connect the two  curriculum pieces while avoiding most of the estimated
$9,000 annual cost of mailing a full copy of the abstinence piece with all
orders of the sexuality materials, as proposed by the original overture from
the Presbytery of John Knox.

	Overture 00-70 will go to the Assembly in its divided form later this week 
for action. Unresolved was the underlying concern expressed by several
commissioners that the abstinence piece be incorporated as a seamless part
of the larger sexuality curriculum in accordance with the Biblical and
confessional standards of the denomination.

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