wfn.org | [PCUSAnews] General Assembly commissioners approve report on domestic violence

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Note #6698 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

General Assembly commissioners approve report on domestic violence 
14-June-2001
GA01140

General Assembly commissioners approve report on domestic violence 

Commissioners also approve resolution asking forgiveness for church’s
‘complicity’ to slavery

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE, June 14 — A policy statement on domestic violence, perhaps
the most significant social policy proposal to this year’s General
Assembly, was given resounding approval Thursday evening.

The 84-page paper entitled Turn Mourning Into Dancing! A Policy Statement on
Healing Domestic Violence was brought to the Assembly floor by the Committee
on National and Social Issues. Assembly commissioners overwhelmingly
approved the document in two parts.

The policy statement was compiled by a task force of the church’s
Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) and includes more than
60 recommendations for action, including a variety of educational and
advocacy efforts at all levels of the church, and asks congregations to
become more involved in ministries to victims, survivors and perpetrators of
domestic violence.

“Tragically the pain of domestic violence is pervasive,” said
the Rev. Diane Quaintance, a minister member of Heartland Presbytery and
chair of the Social Witness Policy Task Force on Healing Domestic Violence.
“It reaches into all corners of our denomination. Into churches small
and large, rural, urban and suburban. Those effected come from every age and
gender. Every ethnic and racial identity, every economic and social group,
every culture and lifestyle.”

Quaintance said the pain of domestic violence is often hidden in silence,
leaving victims, survivors and perpetrators “isolated and alone in the
community of faith.”

The policy statement took the task force more than two years to complete and
“many years of involvement in the issues of domestic violence as
individuals,” said Quaintance. Its purpose is to “hear the
voices of victims and survivors and respond to their calls with the
following goals: first, to protect the victims from further abuse; second,
to stop the abuser’s violence and hold the abuser accountable; and
third, to restore the family relationship, if possible, or mourn the loss of
the relationship.”

According to the report, domestic violence stems from “a need for
power and control,” and can take many forms: physical, emotional and
sexual abuse, and abuse by neglect. It includes child abuse, spouse/partner
abuse, elder abuse, sibling abuse and dating violence. The paper asserts
that the church “should be a vehicle of God’s love, justice and
grace for victims and survivors. This will require an intentional process of
becoming trustworthy partners in the process of mourning, healing and
reconnecting.”

The task force included several domestic violence survivors, clergy and lay
members from congregations of various sizes and locations. Also among the
group was a parish nurse, psychologist, licensed clinical social worker, a
systematic theologian and anti-domestic violence advocates working in both
churches and community organizations.

“We had to learn together what it means to listen to the pain and to
nurture healing,” Quaintance said. “We had to practice that
which we are recommending to the whole church. … It was not an easy
thing to do. Because it means coming face-to-face with the horrific pain and
often intergenerational impact of interpersonal violence.”

Other Justice Issues

Commissioners approved with comment a resolution confessing corporate guilt
that the church “shares for the evils of slavery and requests
forgiveness from God and from all God’s children whose lives have been
damaged by these sins.” The commissioners’ resolution
“pledges and promises to seek, through words and deeds, as individuals
and as a denomination, to demonstrate our sorrow by committing ourselves to
work with our African American brothers and sisters to overcome the vestiges
of slavery that manifest themselves today in church and society as
racism.”

The resolution gave comment to the church’s “common complicity
in the institution of slavery and its oppressive inequities that linger to
this day.” The resolution said the “Presbyterian Church failed
to take a strong stand against segregation and for civil rights in the
1960s. The resolution does, however, note that the historical record gives
testimony to the efforts of many Presbyterians who worked for the abolition
of slavery in the 19th century.

Commissioners also approved a recommendation directing the General Assembly
Council (GAC) to create a task force to study the issue of reparations for
groups subjected to vast injustices.

In other action the Assembly:

*   Approved a recommendation to extend the PC(USA)’s emphasis on
children by declaring the first decade of the 21st century — July 2001
to July 2011 — as the “Decade of the Child.”

*   Approved a recommendation by the denomination’s Advocacy Committee
for Racial Ethnic Concerns to create a task force to study (in consultation
with the advocacy committee) the disenfranchisement of people of color in
the United States’ electoral system.

*  Approved an overture that commends resources for congregations interested
in exploring faith-based initiatives.

*   Disapproved an overture by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, that
advocated use of the island of Vieques, located 10 miles east of Puerto
Rico, for military training. The U.S. Navy, coincidently, announced this
week it will end controversial bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island
in May 2003.

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